Hello and welcome to montrealgazette.com and welcome to Midday. Here’s the rundown on some of the stories we’re following for you today.

U.S. President Barack Obama exhorted the world Tuesday to embrace Nelson Mandela’s universal message of peace and justice, electrifying tens of thousands of rain-lashed spectators and prompting a standing ovation by scores of heads of state in a South African stadium. In a speech that received thunderous applause, Obama urged people to apply the lessons of Mandela, who emerged from 27 years in prison under a racist regime, embraced his enemies when he finally walked to freedom and promoted forgiveness and reconciliation in South Africa. “We, too, must act on behalf of justice. We, too, must act on behalf of peace,” said Obama, who like Mandela became the first black president of his country. Obama said that when he was a student, Mandela “woke me up to my responsibilities — to others, and to myself — and set me on an improbable journey that finds me here today.” Police were expecting a crushing crowd at FNB stadium and had set up overflow points with big screen TVs, but the foul weather and public transportation problems kept many people away. The 95,000-capacity stadium was only two-thirds full.

An internationally renowned fertility specialist is suing the McGill University Health Centre for more than $14 million, claiming the hospital network cheated him out of the profits of the MUHC’s reproductive health centre that he founded almost two decades ago. Dr. Seang Lin Tan, who has been credited with putting the MUHC on the map in the field of assisted reproductive technology, was appointed its chief of obstetrics and gynecology in 1994. Two years later, he founded the McGill Reproductive Centre as a private clinic within the Royal Victoria Hospital. In a lawsuit filed last year, Tan claims he was “illegally dismissed” by the MUHC in 2010 as it prepared to turn the fertility centre into a public clinic. The lawsuit highlights the sometimes uneasy relationship between public and private medicine in Quebec, as well as the staggering sums of money involved in fertility treatments, primarily in-vitro fertilization.

Philippe Couillard easily sailed to a win Monday in a provincial byelection, trouncing seven low-key candidates in the party’s fortress riding of Outremont. And in another Liberal stronghold, the riding of Viau in Montreal north, Liberal candidate David Heurtel came out on top as well. That byelection was bad news for the struggling Coalition Avenir Québec party. From a third-place finish in 2012, it slid to fifth, a mere 3.28 per cent of the vote, behind the Québec solidaire candidate which was on its way to improving its 2012 score. The difference between Outremont and Viau is that Heurtel faced opponents from the Parti Québécois and Coalition Avenir Québec. The two main opposition parties, as a courtesy to ensure Couillard’s arrival in legislature where they plan to attack him, did not run candidates against him. That explains why the celebration started early in Outremont with about 250 packing a church basement on Côte-des-Neiges to watch the results.
Couillard was clearly the winner early in the evening.

And finally, Montreal may not be losing The Sun after all. The striking Dale Chihuly glassworks sculpture — a yellow and red treelike work with colourful glass rays flying out in every direction — had been a fixture on the steps just outside the northern pavilion of the Museum of Fine Arts for much of the year, and many were disappointed to see it disappear recently. It was dismantled in late November, a few weeks after the end of the popular Chihuly exhibition Utterly Breathtaking. But it turns out The Sun might be returning to its berth outside the museum. The city’s leading museum will announce Wednesday that it is launching a fundraising campaign to try to gather enough cash to buy the sculpture and keep it in Montreal.

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